Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

The Stroll er was infinitely patient with his charge, who repeatedly stumbled. While a few extras with more character than most dared to titter a bit, I could visualize Hal Wallis, the studio manager, tearing his hair over the waste film and records, and losing the ability of enjoying — if he ever did — a Fritz Kreisler phonograph record, because of the nightmarish association, and imagining Kreisler stopping in the midst of the record to remark casually, "How unfortunate! I forgot what's next." An "out" was discovered when some third-assistant prop boy. who should have been made a director for the thought, suggested writing the words of the poem on a ten-foot blackboard, and posting it out of the camera's range, where Mulhall could glance at it when he felt weak. If you want to check up on his memory, watch his eyes if you see the picture — if they don't cut the sequence out. After reading this, I suppose mothers whose children have recitations for every occasion, will groom their offspring for stardom — if some long-suffering neighbor doesn't shoot them — either the children or the mothers. I am reminded of the prodigy who memorized the Odyssey and knew the alphabet backward Hollywood has a woman director who is rather chummy with the girls who work for her. I dropped into Henry's one Sunday morning at about 4 a. m. At a table were an elderly woman and five rather attractive but tired girls. There were few other people in the restaurant, so I watched them. After a while the woman opened her purse, counted out a roll of bills, and divided it with the girls. I couldn't help reflecting on Hollywood's need for more of this sort of democracy between employer and employee. Her name is Sally, or Sarah, or something that begins with an "S." and she is a waitress. She works in a drug store about two blocks from the First National studio, and to get there you must follow a narrow path through fields of weeds. On the studio lot is another restaurant where studio employees can eat at the tahle next to Dorothy Mackaill, Billie Dove, Alice White — amid glossy beauty and rampant sex of the type that draws ordinary mortals into theaters in flocks. The old, reliable blackboard is coming back as the players start their schoolday drills over again. Parents of infant prodigies are grooming them for talkie stardom — and shielding them from suffering neighbors. ■■<■:■■: ■■ 7 59 But tut. tut ! Not the studio employees. They walk through the fields of oats and mustard to gawk at the little war who is, withal, attractive in a homy sort of way. There is something hidden and esoteric about this. I'll have to ad< Doctor Marston, Universal's new psychologist, to explain it. I sat in a publicity office one day la<t week, and was even more disillusioned about the souls and characters of our celebrities. Enter first star, with a magazine in her hand. "What do you mean by not putting my name in this ad in bigger type than the title of the picture ? My contract calls for it " Enter featured player. "YOu got my name wrong on that billboard." Publicity director, referring to sheaf of contracts: "Your name is right. According to these contracts your name is to be in letters 57 per cent of the size of the third player. His contract demands that his name be 82^2 per cent the size of the leading woman's, whose contract states her name shall be in type 90.4 per cent the size of the picture's title. Then of course the director's name must be the same size as the leading woman's, and the author's half the size of the director's, to say nothing of the scenario writer, and the fact that we used technicolor in the picture." Featured player, pugnaciously : "I don't want to hear that. I ain't complainin' about the size of my name, or where it is. You forgot my middle initial. 'C ' Flayer leaves, as publicity director mutters. "I can tell him what the 'C stands for." Agitation favoring the return of one Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle to the screen has been going on in its subtle way for the past two years. Personally, I don't think Fatty is any worse than a lot of people outside Hollywood, and I was all in favor of giving him a break, and decrying the brutality and heartlessness of public opinion. I hope you noticed the past tense, because I was a recent visitor to Fatty's cafe, the Plantation, and I'm all in favor of keeping him there. His comedy is puerile. His gags are the hoary ones he used on the screen a generation ago. And like a beggar, he makes a crude play for public sympathy, during his duties as master of ceremonies, by constantly referring to his hard lot in recalling, with mock humor and much self-pity, his experiences in the courts. The producer mind, in a good many cases, is a fascinating thing, if you are entertained enough to try to analyze it. There is a new quickie company with an amazing name. How it got it is worth mentioning. The embryo producer, who, so far, hasn't made a picture, was in a quandary for a name. He was talking to a scenario writer who had a flash of inspiration — scenario writers, I am told, do occasionally have such flashes. The scenarist was trying to help the man. "How about Supreme Pictures' Or Artistic Pictures? Or Tremendous Pictun "Xaw." said the near-producer, "them ain't classy enough." [Continuod on page 117]